Terpsichore: Voices in Dance

Vidya Patel is a Birmingham-based dance artist with a background in Kathak. In 2015, she represented the South Asian Category in the Grand Finals of the inaugural BBC Young Dancer competition, and has since performed in works by the likes of Sir Richard Alston and Gary Clarke. Currently a Young Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells, Vidya is developing her own choreographic practice, collaborating with artists including Shammi Pithia, Connor Scott, and Hetain Patel. 

Beverley Glean MBE has been championing African and Caribbean dance in the U.K. for over 20 years. Having founded Irie Dance Theatre as a touring company back in 1985, she has more recently been focused on working in communities, schools and higher education, undertaking extensive research into how to make university courses in dance more diverse, founding Irie's BA (Hons) Diverse Dance Styles course, the first of its kind in Europe. 

Alla Kovgan is a Moscow-born, New York-based dance film director. Recently renowned for directing the acclaimed Cunningham 3D documentary, Alla is currently working on a feature film in collaboration with Korean choreographer Eun Me Anh, who is widely known as the Pina Bausch of Asia. As audiences' only current access to dance is through a screen due to the global pandemic, I thought it was a perfect time to talk to Alla about the specificities of dance film as an art form. 

Rosie Kay is an acclaimed Birmingham-based choreographer known for using dance to tackle difficult topics including war, religion, and politics. In this episode, we talk about her incredible career, from her early days touring European opera house stages with Polish Dance Theatre to championing female perspectives on stage, and the creation of her latest triple bill of solos, Absolute Solo II, which marks 5 years since she last performed and 21 years since her first ever solo show.

Ellen van Schuylenburch is a legendary contemporary dance artist best known as a founding member of Michael Clark Company. In line with Clark's current retrospective at The Barbican, I thought it was the perfect time to speak with Ellen about her fascinating career, from dancing with Netherlands Dance Theatre 2 to training under Merce Cunningham, being part of Cindy Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" music video to performing bare bottomed alongside Michael Clark and post punk band The Fall.

Paris-based journalist Laura Cappelle writes about dance for The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. Having attained her PhD in sociology last year, she’s recently edited her first book, A New History of Dance in the West. We spoke to her about dance writing, the relationship between critics and artists, and overlooked female dance practitioners.